


An Unusual Engagement

by just_another_classic



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5469992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_classic/pseuds/just_another_classic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow she and Killian end up engaged, and Liam Jones is partially to blame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unusual Engagement

Somehow she and Killian end up engaged.

 

“Somehow” really is the only way to describe the situation, because Killian most certainly never proposed to her. The only exchanging of any ring had been preceded by her somewhat freaking out, and him explicitly telling her that he wasn’t proposing. The ring had been on necklace, but now it rests on her left hand. She had to magically shrink it so it would fit, but you know, things were never normal for them, so a magically shrunk engagement ring that once belonged to his centuries dead brother given to her after a non-proposal really was just par for the course for them.

 

Emma has no one to blame but herself. She was the one who announced they were engaged. She mostly said it because it made the whole situation that much more understandable. She wasn’t marching into the Underworld to rescue her dead boyfriend. She was rescuing her dead fiancé. Much more respectable. Besides, they were going to share a heart. Marriage was the most logical next step, right? At least that’s what Emma told her herself after that fact that she said she and Killian were to be wed.

 

Actually, she didn’t even say that she and Killian were engaged. She just sort of agreed to it. That part was all Liam Jones’ fault, because he’s Killian’s dead brother, and she just so happened to stumble upon him in the Underworld. He introduced himself as  “Captain Liam Jones” and she said she was “Emma Swan,” and proceeded to explain her little plan to resurrect his little brother. He had deduced that she wasn’t his wife, because her last name was _Swan_ , and the Enchanted Forest of centuries prior wasn’t up to speed on the whole “keeping the last name” bit. So he had asked if she was his fiancé. (Because why else would she stomp into the Underworld? Damn antiquated notions.) Unwilling and seemingly unable to deny a Jones boy anything, she had responded with, “You know what? _Sure.”_

 

Thus began her engagement to Killian Jones.

 

Her family took the news in stride, especially shocking since they were informed at the same time as Liam. Then again, she was wearing ring around her neck at the time, and maybe they just assumed that a proposal had occurred sometime during the Camelot and Dark Ones disaster, and were just a bit too afraid and tactful to ask. After all, if her and Killian were actually engaged, Emma would have just run her fiancé through with a sword killing him. It would have been bad form to ask about the status of things between her and her now dead lover. (God, she’s calling things _bad form_ now.) Her mother mentioned something about planning a wedding when they all get back home, and it made her heart swell to think that they were going to bring Killian back and actually have a future together. Henry beamed, and Regina and Robin offered sincere congratulations. (Well, as sincere as Regina could pull off.) Every appeared really and truly happy for her and Killian’s non-engagement.

 

Killian was the only who seemed surprised.

 

Emma blamed Liam for that bit, too, because she had planned to pull her pirate aside and fill him in on things. Ease him into the whole “I’m bringing you back and oh we’re engaged” situation, because it really was a whole lot to take in. Liam, the desperately proud older brother, had unintentionally killed that plan, walking up to a dumbstruck Killian and announcing, “Little brother, you fiancé is simply _marvelous._ However did you manage to trick her into agreeing to marry you? _”_

Killian had been confused at first because he knew that they had never gotten engaged. He knew that there was no proposal, and that Emma had sort of made up the whole thing on the fly to please his brother. Ever the believer in good form, he had even made an attempt to correct Liam, leading Emma to have to forcibly cut him off, “Yes, Captain, we’re engaged. _Get with the program.”_

Honestly, Emma had been shocked that out of everything in the Underworld, their surprise engagement was the thing to upend him most. His reaction to her marching into the Underworld to save his sorry ass? He had apparently expected it, because she was the Savior and couldn’t leave well enough alone. (He was grateful, though, oh so grateful. “I will make it up to you later, love,” he had said, voice laced thick with innuendo.) He even took the whole “splitting a heart thing” in stride, going as far to tease her that she wanted to turn him into her father. (“Not that I don’t like Dave, lass…”) But when he discovered that they were engaged? The man actually whined. Legitimately fucking whined.

 

“It was going to be romantic, Swan.” Killian had insisted when they had somehow found a moment alone. Apparently, there had been a second part to Operation: Light Swan, one that Henry hadn’t told her about. This not-so-mysterious part evidently involved the house and middlemist flowers and her devilishly handsome pirate bending down on one knee. “Simply announcing you are betrothed is not romantic. I was going to romance you. You deserve to be romanced. ”

 

“Yeah, well, you died – _twice_ – and missed your chance.”

 

“If I had known you wanted to marry me so badly, I would have actually proposed in Camelot,” he had pouted, but there had also been a teasing lilt in his voice that signaled the underlying current of happiness at her actions.

 

Because he wanted to marry her.

 

That fact had never been a secret to Emma Swan. Knowledge of the secret had been one of the things that held her back in Camelot. Sure, she was stuck on the house, but the house was just one step in a long list of steps that come in serious relationships. One just doesn’t buy a house with someone they don’t see a future with. The house was a _promise_ of a future and forever, a future that she had decided to hold onto and never let go. (And she didn’t. She decided to fight the laws of life and death for that future, and that has to count for something right?)

 

“Did you at least allow everyone to believe I romanced you?”

 

“Honestly, no one asked how it happened. They sort of just rolled with it,” she had responded with a shrug. Everyone was more focused on other things, like bringing him back from the dead. That being said, Emma imagined there would be quite the interrogation when they returned to Storybrooke. “I think they think it happened sometime in Camelot…and with everything that happened, we just didn’t tell them.”

 

“I’m serious, you know. Had I not believed you weren’t ready, I would have asked you to be my wife then. There’s nothing I want more than for this to be a reality.” His voiced had dropped low at that, and he had stared at her with an expression that once would have scared her with its intensity.

 

“I don’t think I was ready then.” And it was true. The moment he had withdrawn the ring, her heart had nearly jumped out of her chest from panic. Later, when Henry had told her about the house, she had nearly considered embracing the darkness for good in an attempt to distance herself from the future. “But I am now. I think it took you dying for me to realize how much I needed that future…the house and the marriage and you know, everything.”

 

“Then everything you shall have,” Killian had whispered before he kissed her. After a few moments, he broke the kiss. “Though on one condition: you will tell everyone I thoroughly romanced you. Consider it a dead man’s request. I do have a reputation to uphold.”

 

“Deal.”

 

Maybe spontaneous engagements weren’t the worst things after all.


End file.
